PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 25, No. 5, Sept. 1, 2005

New faculty and staff members learn the ropes

By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor
217-244-1072; slforres@uiuc.edu

While thousands of new students were strolling the Quad behind the Illini Union enjoying the hubbub of Quad Day, inside the Union, new faculty members – and new academic professional staff members – were getting information to help them adjust to campus.

The 2005 Faculty/Academic Staff Orientation, held Aug. 23, is an annual event for people hired within the past year that provides information about university and community resources. The event includes workshops tailored to the concerns of new faculty members on topics such as promotion and tenure and accessing research/administrative resources, and an information fair. Fifty organizations, including the Child Care Resource Service, Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services, community organizations such as the Mass Transit District and social organizations such as the Women’s Club were at the fair to get acquainted with new members of the campus community, answer questions and offer assistance with practical concerns such as activating e-mail accounts and navigating the MTD.

Kiel Christianson, a professor of educational psychology who joined the UI’s faculty in fall 2004 and attended the orientation last year, said he found it helpful “to get me thinking about the business end of things, like benefits and tenure.”

Just like new students, new faculty members also may feel a bit overwhelmed at first as they acclimate to a new campus.

“Many of the new faculty (members) are coming out of Ph.D. programs and taking on new roles like learning how to run labs, which is basically like running a business, and they’re concerned about just fitting in to a new campus, a new structure,” said Mary Ellen O’Shaughnessey, associate director of Academic Human Resources, which sponsors the orientation and resource fair.

A large, decentralized organization such as the UI’s Urbana campus can seem intimidating for some new faculty members as they try to figure out whom they need to contact when they need help with something, O’Shaughnessey said.

“We encourage faculty (members) that if they have any concerns to go to their department heads, as that person is really there as a resource for them and should be able to help them understand the system or find what they need,” O’Shaughnessey said. “Academic Human Resources also is available to anyone who has a question and will help them find what they need.”

Many departments and colleges on campus offer orientations or events to help new faculty network with colleagues and to provide practical tips on instructional issues such as cheating.

The College of Engineering offers new faculty members the “Fast Start Program,” a faculty development program begun in 1994 that kicked off the 2005-2006 academic year with a two-day workshop Aug. 18-19. Twenty-nine of the 37 new faculty members in the college attended the workshop, which covered topics such as career planning and development, course design and managing classroom discussions. Two more workshops are planned for January and May.

“There’s research that shows that without any support it can take new engineering faculty members up to five years to become fully productive. But with support – with programs like Fast Start and mentoring – they can become fully productive within one or two years,” said Leslie Crowley-Srajek, assistant director of the Academy for Excellence in Engineering Education. “Typically, we find people are really pleased to get information on time management, writing research proposals, promotion and tenure, and graduate student advising because those are often the most urgently felt needs new faculty members have.”

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences welcomed about 50 new tenure/tenure-track faculty members to campus this fall with a Teaching Academy Retreat at Robert Allerton Park and Conference Center on Aug. 20 and a workshop for non-tenured faculty members Aug. 22. The LAS Teaching Academy also sponsors several other programs and events throughout the year, including the Peer Coaching Program, a New Faculty Teaching Luncheon Series and the Junior Faculty Mentoring Program, which pairs new junior faculty members with mentors outside their home departments.

Paul Diehl, director of the LAS Teaching Academy and the Henning Larsen Professor of Political Science, said that one unintended benefit of the programs has been that they have helped build “more of a community spirit among faculty beyond their departments.”

Some pairs, like Diehl and the person he mentored, who is now on the University of Kansas faculty, find the relationship so fruitful they go on to do collaborative work.

NEW faces 2005

Among the many newcomers to campus are 113 new tenure/tenure-track faculty members whose appointments began this summer or fall. Some of them are just starting their careers, while others have taught at the university level for many years and still others have years’ experience but have just made the switch to academe. One thing they have in common – their combined expertise will enhance the research and teaching at Illinois. With a slight twist to our fall tradition of introducing you to some of these new faces in one issue, we will feature two new colleagues in each of the fall issues of Inside Illinois.

Click photo to enlarge Photo by Kwame Ross Martin D. Burke

Martin D. Burke
assistant professor of chemistry
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Education: M.D., National Institutes of Health Fellow in Medical Scientist Training, a joint program of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Ph.D. (chemistry and chemical biology), Harvard University; B.A. (chemistry), Johns Hopkins University.

Teaching at Illinois: Spring 2006, he will teach Chemistry 536, “Organic Chemistry Research,” which is a lecture course on research techniques in organic chemistry.

Research: Synthetic organic chemistry and chemical biology. “Marty Burke is a brilliant and dynamic young chemist who we were fortunate to recruit to Illinois,” said Steven Zimmerman, interim head and professor of chemistry. “Broadly speaking, the goal of his research is to create new therapeutic approaches to diseases such as cystic fibrosis, hemophilia and sickle cell anemia. The approach that he is developing is innovative and fundamentally important in its own right. It uses small organic molecules as ‘molecular prosthetics’ to replace naturally occurring proteins that are either missing or dysfunctional. He brings a remarkable breadth and depth of training to bear on this exciting new area of chemistry.”

Click photo to enlarge Photo by Kwame Ross Nadya Mason

Nadya Mason
assistant professor of physics
College of Engineering

Education: Ph.D., Stanford University (specialization: experimental condensed matter phsyics); B.S., Harvard University (physics).

Teaching at Illinois: Spring 2006, she will teach Physics 212, “University Physics, Electricity and Magnetism.”

Research: “Nadya Mason is an outstanding condensed matter experimentalist working in an area where complex materials, superconductivity and nanotechnology intersect,” said Jeremiah D. Sullivan, head and professor of physics. “She is a world expert in the physics and electronic properties of carbon nanotubes, the cylindrical carbon molecules so tiny that 10,000 of them could be laid side by side across the width of a human hair. Because of their potential applications in extremely small-scale electronic and mechanical devices, understanding and manipulating the behavior of carbon nanotubes is of great current scientific interest.”
“In addition, Mason will add greatly to our teaching capabilities at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and to our outreach activities,” Sullivan said. “She also is strongly interested in being involved in activities aimed at increasing the number of women and minorities going into science and engineering fields.”

Click photo to enlarge Photo by Kwame Ross Luis Rodriguez

Luis F. Rodriguez
assistant professor of agricultural and biological engineering
College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences

Education: Ph.D. (industrial and systems engineering and bioresource engineering), M.S. (bioresource engineering), B.S. (bioresource engineering), Rutgers University.

Teaching at Illinois: Fall 2005: he will co-teach, with Loren Bode, ABE 100, “Introduction to Agricultural Engineering.” He is expected to teach systems modeling, analysis and management courses in the agricultural engineering undergraduate and graduate programs and the technical systems management undergraduate program.

Research interests: Informatics and analysis of bio-based systems. “Dr. Rodriguez has been participating in NASA’s advanced life support systems research,” said K.C. Ting, professor and head of agricultural and biological engineering. “Within two years of completing his Ph.D., he assumed the leadership to assemble a team to develop and submit a NASA national Research Announcement proposal, ‘Development and Application of Reliability Analysis Techniques for Early Advanced Life Support Systems.’ ” The three-year (December 2004-November 2007), $710,000 project was one of 21 funded out of 114 submitted. He is the principal investigator of the project, which is in the process of being transferred to the UI.

Click photo to enlarge Photo by Kwame Ross Valerie Hotchkiss

Valerie Hotchkiss
Head of the Rare Book and Special Collections Library

Education: Ph.D. (medieval studies), M.Phil., M.A., Yale University; M.L.S., Southern Connecticut State University; B.A. (classical languages and literatures), University of Cincinnati; University of Tübingen (classical languages and German literature).

Teaching: She will be a faculty member in the Medieval Studies Program in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and hopes to become involved in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science to promote rare book librarianship as a career.

Research interests: Women in the Middle Ages; 15th-century printing; the English Bible; libraries and philanthropy; rare book librarianship.

“Dr. Hotchkiss is a respected rare books librarian and scholar,” said Paula Kaufman, university librarian. “She will bring just the right blend of tradition, innovation and technology experience to enhance user services and raise awareness of the extraordinary holdings in our Rare Book and Special Collections Library. She has a national reputation for the remarkable work she has done to transform the Bridwell Library at Southern Methodist University into a beautiful, user-friendly and comfortable place that properly houses and manages a noteworthy collection.”

Click photo to enlarge Photo by Kwame Ross Jerome McDonough

Jerome McDonough
assistant professor
Graduate School of Library and Information Science

Education: Ph.D. (library and information studies), M.L.I.S., B.A. (rhetoric), University of California at Berkeley.

Teaching at Illinois: This fall, McDonough is teaching “Information Organization and Access” (LIS 501); in the future he will develop and teach courses with a focus on digital libraries.

Research interests: McDonough is well known in the digital library world as the chief architect of the metadata encoding and transmission standard (METS), and will be an important asset for the school’s new Certificate of Advanced Study in Digital Libraries. John Unsworth, dean of Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences, said: “Jerry McDonough represents several things that are important to GSLIS and to library and information science in general: a theoretical understanding of a research area that’s informed by practice; an enthusiasm for research that communicates itself through teaching; and a sense of the real needs that will be met by better understanding these particular research problems. In Jerry’s case, the research area is digital libraries, and more specifically standards and preservation. These are issues of importance to all of us, these days, and they’re particularly pertinent as GSLIS launches its new advanced degree program in digital libraries.”

Click photo to enlarge Photo by Kwame Ross Catlainn K. Sionéan

Catlainn K. Sionéan
professor of kinesiology and community health
College of Applied Life Studies

Education: Ph.D. and M.A. (both sociology), University of Kentucky; B.A. (psychology), Alma College, Alma, Mich.

Teaching at Illinois: Sionéan is teaching Women’s Health (Community Health 409) this fall.

Research interests: Sionéan’s research focuses on examining the influences of social context on selected health outcomes. Her previous experience in research has examined the influence of social conditions and behavioral factors associated with women’s health. Prior to coming to Illinois, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and she held positions at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University.
Sionéan has a strong background in public health research environments that is reflected in her strong publication record, said department head Wojtek Chodzko-Zajko. “Her scholarly activities in the area of race, demographics and community influences on health behavior make her an attractive candidate for inclusion in diverse multidisciplinary projects both currently under way and planned for the future for the college and across the campus.”

Click photo to enlarge Photo by L. Brian Stauffer LeAnne Howe

LeAnne Howe
professor of American Indian studies and English (creative writing)
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Education: MFA (creative writing), Vermont College of Norwich University

Teaching at Illinois: Howe will teach courses in American Indian literatures, and she plans to develop courses in American Indian theater and performance, American Indians and the cinema, and Writing Native America (for the screen).

Research interests: Howe is an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Director of the Native American House Wanda Sue Pillow said Howe “is a noted American Indian author, playwright and scholar. Born and educated in Oklahoma, she writes fiction, creative non-fiction, plays, poetry and screenplays that primarily deal with American Indian experiences.” In addition, Howe recently has turned to filmmaking. She is the screenwriter and on-camera narrator for the 90-minute PBS documentary “Indian Country Diaries: Spiral of Fire,” scheduled to be broadcast in November. She also is writer/co-producer of a new documentary project, “Playing Pastime: American Indian Fast-Pitch Softball, and Survival,” with three-time Emmy award-winning filmmaker James Fortier.

Click photo to enlarge Photo by L. Brian Stauffer James Pugh

James Pugh
professor of jazz studies
College of Fine and Applied Arts

Education: Bachelor of Music, The Eastman School of Music – University of Rochester

Teaching at Illinois: “Jazz and Classical Trombone,” graduate seminars in jazz composition, and graduate seminars in jazz styles.

Special interests: “Jim Pugh is the consummate 21st century musician,” said Kathleen Conlin, dean of the College of Fine and Applied Arts. “He performs, composes and teaches in both the classical and jazz idioms. Based in New York for more than 20 years, he has played with such diverse institutions as the New York Philharmonic, on Broadway in the musical hit ‘Fosse,’ and the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band.” As lead or principal trombone, Pugh has performed on more than 40 film soundtracks, and has recorded with artists such as Paul Simon, Barbra Streisand, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Steely Dan and Frank Sinatra. He has composed and arranged music for jingles (MCI, Chrysler, Sprite, Fresca, Diet Coke), National Public Radio, films, records, and his composition “Lunch With Schrödinger’s Cat” received a Lincoln Center premiere in 1989. Pugh also has been involved with the development of the Edwards small-bore tenor trombone and has worked closely with Dave Monette in the development of the Monette TS11 and TS 6 small-shank tenor trombone mouthpiece.

Click photo to enlarge Photo by L. Brian Stauffer Carolyn Shields

Carolyn Shields
professor and head, department of educational organization and leadership
College of Education

Education: Ph.D. (educational administration), University of Saskatchewan; M.A. (French), B.A. (educational administration), Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

Teaching at Illinois: In the spring, Shields will teach a graduate course in politics and democracy for school leaders; next year she also will teach a course on leadership in diverse educational contexts.

Research interests: Shields is interested in the areas of school leadership for social justice, practice of educational leadership with cross-cultural and diverse populations, creating inclusive teaching environments to maximize student achievement. College of Education Dean Susan Fowler said: “Dr. Shields has established herself as a scholar who remains committed to tying excellent research with effective practice. She has a very strong belief in the responsibility of institutions like the College of Education to help communities build stronger schools and to create environments that provide open access to all learners. Her passion for the field of education, her commitment to students, and her ability to work with colleagues to form a shared academic vision all combine to make Carolyn Shields an outstanding choice to lead an outstanding department.”

Click photo to enlarge Photo by L. Brian Stauffer Jon Solomon

Jon Solomon
professor of classics and Novak Chair
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Education: Ph.D. (classics), M.A. (Greek), University of North Carolina; B.A. (classics) University of Chicago.

Teaching at Illinois: In the spring, Solomon will teach “Classic Mythology” and “Classical Allusions in Modern Film.”

Research Interests: Solomon is a leading expert on ancient Greek musical theory, Greek mythology and the classical tradition. He has published widely on the representation of the ancient world in European opera, in television and in film. Solomon will be able to make the most of his Novak chair position not only as a researcher, but also as a teacher and undergraduate mentor. He loves to teach large lecture courses designed to introduce students to the ancient world and is interested in the possibility of developing large, general-education courses in his areas of expertise, including a course on ancient mythologies in art and music. Kirk Freudenburg, chair of classics, said, “Professor Solomon has interests in humanistic fields that extend beyond the confines of the classics, and that makes him a rather unusual classicist with special value to the field.”
In addition, Solomon has been interviewed and consulted by the local and national media on various occasions, including an interview by “60 Minutes” for his book on academia.

Click photo to enlarge Photo by L. Brian Stauffer Paul Vaaler

Paul Vaaler
associate professor of business administration
College of Business

Education: Ph.D. (strategic management and organization), Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota; JD, Harvard Law School; M.A. (philosophy, politics and economics), Worchester College, Oxford University; B.A. (history), Carleton College, Northfield, Minn.

Teaching at Illinois: Vaaler will be teaching an international business course in the Executive MBA program this semester. Next semester, he will be teaching “Law, Technology, and Intellectual Property” for the MBA and M.S. in Technology Management programs.

Research Interests: Vaaler’s research and teaching interests are in the area of international business and the management of technology. He is involved in the area of global technology, such as the study of global technology management, comparative national technology policy and technology transfer to the Third World. Huseyin Leblebici, head of business administration, said “Vaaler will be an important addition to the technology management initiative of the college at the MBA level and the new M.S. in Technology Management program within the department of business administration.”

Click photo to enlarge Photo by L. Brian Stauffer Chi-Fang Wu

Chi-Fang Wu
assistant professor of social work
School of Social Work

Education: Ph.D. (social work), University of Wisconsin; M.A. (social work), National Taiwan University; B.A. (social work), Tunghai University, Taiwan.

Teaching at Illinois: Wu will be teaching “Research Seminar in Program Evaluation.”

Research Interests: Wu’s research on welfare reform has drawn the attention of policy analysts in Wisconsin, where she conducted her dissertation research, and nationally. As one of her mentors noted, “I have been struck with her combination of high-level quantitative techniques and her sensitivity to the way policy works in the real world.”
Wynne S. Korr, dean of the School of Social Work, noted that under federal welfare-reform policies “women can be sanctioned (lose cash benefits) for not following the rules regarding seeking work or training. Wu’s dissertation research is a groundbreaking study that has shown that women who are sanctioned may be more likely to exit welfare but may not receive higher earnings. She also found that sanction rates are unusually high for some groups, including Hispanics and mothers with newborns.” Wu plans on extending her research on the impact of welfare reform to a study of vulnerable rural families in Illinois.

Click photo to enlarge Photo by L. Brian Stauffer Heather Hyde-Minor

Heather Hyde-Minor, associate professor of architecture
College of Fine and Applied Arts

Education: Ph.D. (philosophy), M.A., Princeton University; B.A., Mount Holyoke College.

Research Interests: Hyde-Minor’s research focuses on Piranesi and the city of Rome in the early 18th century. Her research re-examines the architectural career of Piranesi and the impact of his work on the architectural developments of Rome in the early 18th century. She also has a research interest in the history of architectural theory and on the development of the Renaissance palace.
David M Chasco, professor and the director of the School of Architecture, said: “During her on-campus interview Dr. Hyde-Minor impressed her audience by presenting a new piece of research inspired by the collection of architectural historical treatises in the Rare Book Room of the UIUC library. She had obviously done her homework.”
“Although she has only recently completed her Ph.D., Dr. Hyde-Minor has already established an international reputation among scholars working in Renaissance and Baroque Italy,” said Robert Ousterhout, professor and program chair for Architectural History and Preservation, School of Architecture.
Teaching at Illinois: “Renaissance Architecture” and Seminar in Renaissance and Baroque Architecture.

Click photo to enlarge Photo by L. Brian Stauffer David Williams

David Williams, professor and head of veterinary clinical medicine
College of Veterinary Medicine

Education: Ph.D., University of Liverpool, England; M.A., VetMB, B.A. (physiology), University of Cambridge, England.

Research Interests: “Dr. Williams is an internationally known scholar in comparative gastroenterology and he previously served as head of Small Animal Medicine and Surgery at Texas A&M University,” said Herbert E. Whiteley, the dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine. “He has demonstrated outstanding leadership skills in his previous positions and has an excellent vision and plan to enhance the department of veterinary clinical medicine’s national and international scholarly reputation.
His international reputation as a researcher will be a key asset in recruiting clinician scientists and in helping clinical faculty members build successful collaborative research programs. He also brings a great deal of practice management expertise to emphasize a ‘real world’ view in veterinary education,” Whiteley said.

Click photo to enlarge Photo by L. Brian Stauffer Megan Janke

Megan Janke
assistant professor of recreation, sport and tourism
College of Applied Life Sciences

Education: Ph.D. (child and family development), University of Georgia; M.S. (parks, recreation and tourism management), Clemson University; B.S. (recreation, parks and tourism), University of Florida.

Teaching at Illinois: Janke will teach Recreation, Sport, and Tourism 316 (“Leisure and Human Development”). She also will contribute to the curriculum development in the area of leisure and health within the department and college.

Research Interests: Janke’s research interests are in the areas of leisure, aging and health. Specifically, her research interest focuses on the role of leisure on individual’s physical and mental well-being during transitions such as retirement, the onset of disability and caregiving. Leisure studies department head Cary McDonald said of Janke: “She is a licensed recreational therapist, specializing in activities with older adults, and she brings a wealth of creativity to her work in this arena. It is this background and her most recent academic training outside of our immediate field in child, family and gerontology that make me so enthusiastic about her joining our programs.”

Click photo to enlarge Photo by L. Brian Stauffer Larry Solum

Larry Solum
John E. Cribbet professor of law
College of Law

Education: J.D. (law), Harvard; B.A. (philosophy), University of California at Los Angeles

Teaching at Illinois: In spring 2006, Solum will teach Law 606 (“Constitutional Law I”) and Law 607 (“Civil Procedure”). He also will teach “Intellectual Property Law.”

Research Interests: An internationally renowned legal theorist, Solum was installed as the John E. Cribbet Professor, one of 15 endowed chairs or professorships in the College of Law. Heidi Hurd, dean of the college, said:“Professor Larry Solum is one of several superstar faculty members we’ve added in the past few years. ‘Legal Affairs’ magazine nominated him as one of the nation’s top 20 most influential and important legal thinkers and for good reason. He is a distinguished expert in constitutional law, civil procedure and intellectual property. He is also one of the most downloaded authors in America from the Social Sciences Research Network.”

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